Category: Media

It’s time for another great Science Sunday! Check it out this weekend on Nov. 18 at 2pm at the T. Stell Newman Visitor Center. Dr. Sarah Lemer is this month’s guest speaker. Get a preview of this Science Sunday here. How does coral genetics research help with reef conservation? Watch this video to find out.

Guam has experienced mass coral bleaching over the past five years from high water temperatures. Though many corals died from these bleaching events, some corals survived. Dr. Sarah Lemer, an evolutionary biologist, seeks to find out which genes in these surviving corals make them resilient to bleaching. Dr. Lemer is a member of Guam’s EPSCoR research team at the University of Guam.

Science Sunday is free and open to the public. Seats are available on a first come, first served basis. No pre-registration required.

We’re kicking off monitoring season with Coral Reef Monitoring Training this Saturday, April 7 from 9am-12pm at Tepungan Beach Park in Piti. Learn about basic coral ecology, threats to Guam’s coral reefs, and ways people are trying to help protect our reefs. Get hands-on experience with an introduction to reef monitoring survey methods that help us track the health of Guam’s reef flat areas. Once we get in the water, participants will get to know the area with marine species ID session and practice survey methods learned on land. Click here to sign up for this free training.

An overview on Guam’s reefs and their threats

Marine Species ID fun

Practice survey methods in the water!

Need service learning hours? This event will earn you 3 service learning hours with an opportunity to earn additional hours when you participate in future Monitoring Events. Participants under 18 must have parent/ guardian sign a liability release form. Participants under 14 must be accompanied by parent or other trusted adult. Forms will be available on site on the day of event. Share this link with your teacher for approval: http://guamservicelearning.com/coral-reef-monitoring

Don’t forget it’s Guam Year of the Reef! Become a member of our team and show your love for Guam’s reefs.

Join us for this Science Sunday as we welcome a visiting guest speaker – Kelley Elliott, part of the NOAA Okeanos Explorer crew. The Okeanos Explorer will spend some time docking in Guam and Saipan this summer on their upcoming missions to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument. An awesome way to celebrate Earth Month and learn about unique underwater features of the Marianas!

There will be time to ask questions, share experiences, and connect with Kelley Elliott. Share with your family, friends, co-workers, everybody! No need to sign up – just show up.

Service learning credit is available. Students can attend Science Sunday talk, write-up a summary of talk, and share reflection/summary with program coordinator to be posted on this website.

We did a guest blog on the All Islands Coral Committee featuring our Adopt-A-Reef initiative to help community and school groups start coral reef monitoring in their village. Then later, expand their village/ school activities to promote environmental stewardship that they think are best to spread their message.

In this video, GCCRMP members share what they hope to gain from the Learning Exchange that takes them to Hawaii. Main goal of the Learning Exchange: to explore different ways of working with their communities to promote environmental stewardship through conservation and education. Check out these other videos of experiences from Hawaii here.

It’s 2014! And we’re proud to say we ended 2013 with a BANG! In November and December alone, we welcomed seventy five new members. Let’s do the “year in review” just to see our progress thus far to help set goals for 2014.

Beginning January 2013, we hosted our monthly Classroom and In-Water Training sessions that were (and still are) open to all Guam residents. We have over 300 bright, enthusiastic members spanning from the age of 7 to over 60 with the shared interest of Guam’s coral reefs. It’s been a great experience watching how our members have grown in their own way and share their experiences of Guam’s waters with one another. My absolute favorite is to see “amazement” on the faces of our members when they see a new marine animal, a beautiful coral or understand a new aspect of marine ecology.

Meeting the residents of Fouha Bay

In 2013, we also started training student groups from University of Guam (UOG): UOG Green Army of the Center for Island Sustainability and UOG Americorps. Both of these groups have assisted with our data collection in primarily Fouha Bay as part of the Humatak Project. They always bring tons of energy (and laughter) to monitoring events. Additionally, we started training the Conservation Corp from War in the Pacific National Historic Parks summer program. Next month, Conservation Corps will begin collecting data through monitoring surveys at their adopted site, Asan Beach Memorial Park. We’ve also been working with the Umatac Coral Reef Ambassadors to set up their adopted sites of Umatac Bay and Cetti Bay, which they began monitoring in September 2013. Other groups we’ve worked with are Americorps members of Pa’a Taotaotano cultural group, Guam Community College marine biology students, and George Washington High School’s proactive Marine Mania group. If you have a group or organization that is interested in adopting a monitoring site, please contact us.

An awesome morning at Fouha Bay

Toward the end of 2013, we partnered with National Park Service to host Science Sunday. So far, we’ve had an awesome turn out since it started in October last year. Every third Sunday of the month, different local scientists have an opportunity to share their work on Guam’s coral reefs or in Micronesia with the community. Last year, the community heard talks on coral bleaching and disease, Marine Preserve Areas in Guam and Micronesia, and a new project on Guam looking at coral reproduction. We kicked off 2014 with an awesome Science Sunday featuring the infamous Crown-of-Thorns Starfish. Science Sunday has provided a place for the public to share their observations and experiences on Guam and ask some very important questions about threats to our coral reefs. Shout out to all our guest speakers of Science Sunday: Roxanna Miller, Dr. Pete Houk, Mike McCue, and Ciemon Caballes!

Ciemon Caballes shows methods on controlling COTS outbreaks

2013 was a great year! We gained really enthusiastic and bright members, worked with groups who want to monitor a bay that’s important to their community, and opened communication lines with scientists and the public. Needless to say, we have some high standards for 2014. Thank you to our program members, partners, and all those that have supported (and continue to support) our efforts to engage Guam residents as stewards of the island’s precious coral reefs.

Guam Community Coral Reef Monitoring Program’s first newsletter issue is out! See what GCCRMP has been up to lately and how Guam residents have been learning about and/or getting involved with protecting Guam’s coral reefs! Look out for our Member Feature and save the date for our Upcoming Events! Check it out! Click on the link below.